Family • Photo Restoration • 20 • Kende • Generations

• My mother has been working on our family tree for over fifteen years. At the moment she’s tracked our lineage down to the 17th century. Much of the family tree has been posted online at www.geni.com, although many family members have indicated that they don’t want to be identified. So a “private tree” also exists. Nevertheless, my mother has done an excellent job in collecting images, stories, and facts spanning over ten generations. This post takes the reader on a single branch of the family tree that have a direct ancestory to myself and my sister.

• I had the pleasure of restoring these images. Some of them are over 160 years old. According to Wikipedia, the oldest living photograph is from around the 1820’s. If I make an educated guess, it likely took a couple of decades for my ancestors to have access to photography. The earliest photo we have in our possession is dated around 1850. Anything earlier are paintings.

• Postscript from Gabriel Dusil • At the time that I reconstructed this photo, I set a new record of 7 hours and 40 minutes, split across two days. I thought that was a long stretch, until I tackled the Haltenberger Family photo below…

• Postscript from Eva Dusil • 2014 December • This is a rare photo of the entire Haltenberger family from 1910. Rudolf Haltenberger was the brother of my grandmother Malvin Haltenberger (married Tellery). Rudolf Jr. relocated the family textile business to Budapest, Hungary in 1920, where it became a corporation. Rudi and his family emigrated to Liverpool, New South Wales, Australia in 1949 and died there in 1973. In the photo Malvin Haltenberger (married Tellery, my grandmother), is pregnant with my mother Valeria Tellery. My mother was born on the 9th of September 1910, so possibly this photo was taken sometime in the summer that year. As a child I only knew Litta on the far left. My mom and I would sleep over at her apartment in Budapest, Hungary, on our journey to Keszthely to begin our summer holidays. Hermine Steinhübel (married: Haltenberger) & Rudolf Haltenberger were my great grandparents.

• Postscript from Gabriel Dusil • 2015 January • This restoration set a new record for me. It took me 22 hours across four days to restore this photo. This was a big test of endurance and patience. But I was up to the challenge after having already restored 190 photos by this time. One main issue in restoration is to recognize the “photo” below the layer of scratches and other damage, so that it can be restored properly. This is especially problematic around subtle shadows and folds in clothing. I recorded the entire restoration process, which can be viewed in the video above the photo. Don’t be alarmed – The video has been increased to 80 times that of real-time, so it’s only sixteen minutes. Sit back and enjoy the background music!